The future of software development is fast, automated and constantly changing, so what you should be questioning is: “can my test automation strategy keep up?”
Development lifecycles are sometimes cut short and the delivery is needed quicker - without a proper approach, your test automation strategy can become a bottleneck instead of an advantage.
With this article, you’ll understand all the features Xray Enterprise brings to the table. From CI/CD pipeline integrations to flexible automation framework connections and centralized quality management
Whatever the future brings, your automation strategy shouldn't be compromised, and a great test management tool can and will make a difference.
The challenges of Legacy Test Automation
Outdated test automation frameworks can be the cause of the major pain points QA teams face when trying to update their strategy. Here are a few of the main challenges legacy test automation can bring:
- Inflexibility in scaling: as projects grow, legacy frameworks are constantly struggling to keep up. With the number of automated tests increasing, it becomes more difficult to ensure fast execution and efficiency. The lack of support for parallel test execution or integration of modern pipelines potentiates bottlenecks that delay delivery and impact quality;
- Tool fragmentation: using tools that are disconnected from each other means working in silos. When automated tests get scattered across different platforms, keeping everything in order, and ensuring cohesion when it comes to quality is extremely challenging. This scenario will negatively impact the communication between teams, increasing the risk for errors and making test data management worse;
- Limited traceability: ensuring a comprehensive traceability between automated tests, business requirements, and end results isn’t easy to get - especially in regulated sectors. Without a connection between what’s being tested and the project goals, it’s difficult to make informed decisions;
- Maintenance overhead: as systems evolve, keeping test automation updated becomes more and more complex. Small changes in code can break critical tests, demanding more time and resources to keep up with adjustments. Without a flexible structure, your test automation strategy can quickly turn into a burden.
How Xray Enterprise future-proofs your automation strategy
Seamless integration
Xray Enterprise seamlessly integrates with major CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins, GitLab, and Bamboo, allowing for continuous automation while reducing complications. It supports popular frameworks such as JUnit, TestNG, Cucumber, and Robot Framework, ensuring compatibility with the tools QA teams rely on. Through REST APIs, it also enables real-time test result automation, providing clear visibility into the tests' state across every stage of the delivery process.
By seamlessly integrating with modern CI/CD pipelines and automation frameworks, you can better align your automation strategy with the faster delivery cycles, reducing the need for manual intervention.
Unified test management across testing efforts
Get ready to manage all your tests - automated and manual - in a centralized and organized system, while reducing information silos. Our tool offers a unified test management benefit, which allows you to check the results of your automated tests and easily associate them with business requirements and user stories, ensuring traceability of what’s being validated across each execution.
This approach allows teams to have a clear understanding and view of the product quality, no matter where tests are coming from. With this feature, you can access a holistic view, helping you make more informed decisions.
You can also manage testing environments on a larger scale using advanced test plans and datasets, which allow you to keep up with multiple scenarios in an organized set.
Our tool adjusts to the growing demands of test automation, keeping its efficiency in the testing processes. If you’re looking for a test management solution that can keep up with scaling your test automation efforts, you should consider trying Xray Enterprise out (for free!).
Improved traceability and reporting
Each automated test can be seamlessly integrated with Jira issues, epics, and requirements, ensuring comprehensive traceability from start to finish. Xray Enterprise also supports mixed-type reporting, allowing you to consolidate manual and automated test runs into unified reports for a clearer, more consistent execution status.
The advanced audit-ready reports can track the test efforts, offering you detailed insights. This is essential for teams that work in regulated industries or that simply need constant monitoring and audits done.
The reports can also be personalized, allowing you to adapt them to your specific needs. You and your team can ensure total transparency, while simplifying communication between stakeholders and results sharing.
Best practices for Test Automation with Xray Enterprise
Adopt a Hybrid approach: you can mix manual and automated tests to ensure a better coverage of all your use cases if needed. Not all tests can (or should) be automated - you can find a safe balance between the two methodologies which can also be beneficial to ensure quality in diverse environments and scenarios;
Leverage CI/CD integrations: we advise you to leverage the integration of CI/CD pipelines to better automate the feedback cycles and accelerate delivery. By incorporating automated tests in each stage of the pipeline, bug detection and other issues that might arise can easily be targeted - overall keeping everything more efficient;
Prioritize traceability: make sure that each automated test is linked to a business requirement. Traceability is crucial and ensuring you keep yours clear can aid in monitoring coverage, validating important requirements and ensuring you’re meeting regulations.
Ensuring your automation strategy is ready for the future is essential to keeping up to the rapid modern development. Fragmented tools, or strict processes aren’t enough to keep you going. It’s important to have a flexible solution, ready to adapt to the constantly changing software testing environment. Furthermore, you should aim for a solution that is adaptable, scalable and easily integrated.
Xray Enterprise offers you that. With an unified testing approach, both manual and automated, seamless CI/CD integration and deep analysis and insights - your team can benefit from this and get its automation strategy to the next level while ensuring it keeps up to date.
Don’t get stuck in the past. Future-proof your automation strategy today. Try Xray Enterprise.
